Farmscape for January 23, 2015

The vice-president of Sunterra Farms says the North American experience with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea has demonstrated the value of swine health initiatives in Canada.
Representatives of the Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance, a newly formed organization created to assume some of the responsibilities in western Canada of the now defunct Canadian Swine Health Board, met earlier this week as part of the Banff Pork Seminar to discuss direction of the organization.
The provincial pork boards in western Canada, working with the provincial chief veterinary officers, have set up an executive committee to drive the effort forward and the majority of western Canada's pork processors have committed a dollar per sow, to the tune of approximately $285,000, to help fund the effort.
Ben Woolley, the vice president of Sunterra Farms, says swine health surveillance, including the development of a new app to allow veterinarians to easily input data, will be a priority item.

Clip-Ben Woolley-Sunterra Farms:
What we expect to happen, and actually it was approved at the national level as well earlier on this week, what we expect to happen is to encourage veterinarians to input data into a database in western Canada so that we can monitor the health of the herd in western Canada during any breaks or any changes in health that happen.
You've got Quebec and Ontario and western Canada, so if we can have the three separate areas working together, through CPC on the health file, then it becomes a lot easier than having all the western provinces working independently.
It's important because right now the information is in a lot of different places, and if we can get it all into one place, then it becomes much easier for veterinarians to make decisions on what needs doing if there's a health break.

Woolley says to see the importance of swine health efforts all you have to do is look at last year where the U.S. industry lost about five million pigs to PED while the infection was kept fairly well under control in Canada.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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